Official Luthiers Forum!

Nice looking guitar there, Mike!
Nelson

Thanks Nelson,

I got the basic design from JOJO right here on OLF through the use of his pdf files. I tweaked it like I needed and modeled it in Rhino. For my first guitar, I am well pleased.

Mike

Not being a professional Drafter or Designer, I purchased BobCad a few years ago. Having had some background in earlier versions of AutoCad, BobCad was pretty easy to deal with. I think I was using V20 which was just venturing into 3d at the time. I had some difficulty getting the 3d portion to work so after hearing about Rhino for a few years, I bought the educational copy and started from scratch. Running through a few tutorials was enough to get me going to the point where I could just sit down and start to draw. I would search for Youtube tutorials for certain techniques, I'd use trial and error, and have occasional questions from people on the net. This made me feel pretty good about my progress for guitar construction for the basics. Now I'm trying to fine tune things. Rhino is pretty powerful and I think if I used it 40 hours a week I'd get proficient..however that isn't going to happen. I'm thinking about getting a book now, as I think a hard copy would be helpful resource. If there isn't a Rhino for Dummies, there should be.

The Rhino manual is pretty good, and I found it to be a decent resource when I started, but in V4 I've been really impressed with the online help.

A lot of people don't know about it, or don't think to look for it since newsgroups are oh so 1998, but the Rhino newsgroup is insanely well supported. When I was getting started, I could ask questions or post models on there I was having trouble with and have responses back within hours with full explanations or even mini-tutorials on where I was going wrong. Amazing place! You can get there from the McNeel website, and I think it's by far the best resource there is when you hit a wall.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

I've been avoiding posting on this forum of late because so many topics turn into competitions between favorites. However, I know and respect David and his work (Hello David!) so I'll chime in for whatever it's worth. I've been drafting with various CAD programs for 25 +- years on both Mac (MacDraft, MiniCad/VectorWorks,PowerCadd, Form•Z, & Bozai) and PC (AutoCad).

The first thing I notice in the replies is how quickly (pretty much immediately) the conversation turned to CAM & CNC, when the original query was for a CAD suggestion.
As with choosing any tool, what do you want to do with it? If your goal is 2-d working drawings, there are many drafting programs that are fast and easy to use. I use PowerCadd (Mac) which is a very fast and elegant program. I draw guitars in full and as parts, print out full size on my 24" wide plotter and presto I've got plans. Sometimes I'll take the full size print and spray adhesive it to 1/4" ply or mdf, cut it out and I've got a hard pattern I can make parts from. I can also take 2-d vector based files, e-mail them to my laser cutting guy and he can cut out the 1/4" ply to tolerences in the 1/10k" tolerance range.

Now, if you're planning to dive into the world of CNC, that's a different animal. The sub-questions this creates are will you be subcontracting out the CNC work (in which case you don't need to generate the CAM file, your sub will) or do you plan to buy a CNC machine and jump into that deep and dark hole yourself?

The modeling programs already listed all have their strengths and weaknesses. I personally use Form•Z (runs on both platforms), which can output any number of file formats that CAM software can adapt to a CAM file. I can also generate quicktime animations that are an invaluable presentation tool to my customers. http://www.charlesfreeborn.com/MissionTableMovie.html

Speaking from experience, the most expensive part of any 3-d modeling package is the time it takes to get really good at it. If you are a complete neophyte at drawing on a computer I suggest you start very simply with something like Google Sketch up (free). Then really evaluate what you want to do, and go from there. Form•Z has a streamlined version called Bonzai that is about $500 and will have you modeling in very short order, with plenty of tools and capabilities for drawing, but no CAM output. It can however export files to CAM software, which puts us right back to the CAD/CAM/CNC decision. I say don't buy a Ferrari if a bicycle is all you need to get you there.
-C

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Freeborn Guitars
and home of BeauGuard©

Hello Chas,

I think these threads end up going to cnc and cam because those of us that use cnc automatically think that anyone that asks a question about cad is headed that direction! Maybe it is a genetic defect.....but it just seems like the natural progression.


Mike

If you install Grasshopper plug inn for Rhino,
it kinda turns it into parametric modeller.
Granted, it is not the easiest to use for a newbie,
but it is free and have a good online support forum.


Just my 2 cents.